Grammar Girl here. I'm Inyon Fogarty, and I'm teaching a writing workshop for the Associated Press on May 20th,

and I've been working with the stylebook editor, Anna Jo Bratton, because of it. And I just thought it would be

really fun to have her as a guest on the show to talk about all things

style book. Anna Jo has been the style book editor for about a year now and hasn't had an entire

career in journalism and writing. Anna Jo, welcome to the Grammar Girl podcast. Oh, thanks so much

for having me. I'm a huge fan and I'm so excited to be here. Oh, thank you. Well,

you know, why don't you give us some background? Like, how did you get to this amazing job?

Yeah, so I've been with the AP for almost 20 years and always as a reporter or an editor. I worked

many years as a copy editor on an editing desk. I also worked as the AP's enterprise editor,

so working on big projects. I've edited Spot News. And about 10 years ago, I joined this

style book committee as a member. I've always been interested in words and language and what

things mean and the evolution of language. And so I started work on the committee.

A year ago, when our former style book editor left, I applied for the job. And here I am.

Sometimes she still seems a little surreal that now I'm the one trying to make all these difficult decisions.

Why don't you describe what a committee meeting looks like? How often do you

meet? Do people argue? Like what? There's definitely a lot of arguing. No, we all like each other.

We have a brand new committee. Me and one other person are the only ones who are left from the

previous committee. They're six of us, and they come from all corners of the newsroom. We have a sports

writer. We have a business editor, trends and culture editor, race and ethnicity editor. So people

from all over, united by caring about language. So we meet usually once a week. If we're coming

up on the rollout of a new

style book, which is where we're at right now, sometimes much more, several times a week,

...